I’m speaking at Like Minds Immersive on Thursday 18th March in London on the subject of “Developing Social Media Strategy“, with one of the stars from Like Minds 2010, James Whatley.

It’s an afternoon training event with only 12 places (of which most are gone) which is designed to literally ‘immerse’ the participants into a learning environment where each person comes away with some serious knowledge and serious points to action. You can read more about it and book yourself in on the Immersive site, but I just wanted to share a few thoughts on why this is needed.

There are few people who understand strategy when it comes to Social Media. The fact that many keep insisting “there are no experts” while others insist that there are experts, but you need to beware of the “social media snake oil” is a result of a lot of fake, misunderstood and plain rubbish that does exist online. And because Social Media uses itself to talk mostly about itself, we have an echo-chamber effect that creates a lot of content, a lot of confusion, but also a lot of expertise.

The fact that Social Media so often gets associated with the tools also creates a mist that makes otherwise smart people a little bit weary and ignorant. We have an overload of specialist terminology, a whole bunch of spammers and those who just oversell, and then people in the middle trying to make their way by learning what they can by trial and error.

Out of those that do understand strategy, those who make it happen are fewer. It’s funny – everyone wants to hire the famous bloggers, but they don’t even know what successes they’ve had, other than a successful blog.

What we’ve done with Immersive is try to address these issues. First, we get an industry expert to speak – hence James Whatley. He’s working with Nokia, Cancer Research, Canon, and other clients at 1000heads. He’s behind some campaigns that you know, and others that you don’t.

Next, we provide clear models and frameworks for Social Media strategy. The biggest compliment I had last year was after our Immersive in December in Exeter, when one attendee (Adam Stone, if you want to fact-check) said that he used the content to win business shortly after.

What will we be discussing at this Immersive?

• Models for key strategies and their according levels of participation
• Frameworks for growing a Social Media campaign through it’s various stages
• The different types of Social Media presence, and how to run them
• Understanding igniting word of mouth in the Social Media context

If you are in or near London, then I’d recommend you get along – if only for the networking with the people who have already booked in, it’s well worth £350 for the afternoon. Lunch is also on us, served by our hosts One Alfred Place.

You get directions, more info and book online at the Immersive site.